First post, by JoaoAS
Apart from my 2 work laptops, I have 2 desktops and been gathering some more parts to make other builds. I'm thinking of building a third one, as i shall explain later. For now, my current desktop which is running Windows XP (as for some reason is not coping well with windows 7, and later windows just don't install) and was built in 2005:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (lightly overclocked to 2.2GHz)
DFI Lanparty nF4 SLI-DR (awesome board, a dream for overclockers back in 2005)
2x1GB Team Elite DDR400 (in the beginning it had 1GB Twinmos Speed Premium with BH5 chips, which benefitted from the board's higher vdimm, but one of the dimms broke down)
Radeon X850 Crossfire (cheap swap, used to have a regular X850XT but is in need of a reflow)
Maxtor 250GB sata2 + Samsung 200GB Sata + Seagate 80GB IDE
NEC 3500 DVD-RW, LG DVD-ROM, floppy drive, zip drive
LC Power modular 480w psu
All of the above inside a nice SuperFlower SF-561T2-BK
This system may remain more or less untouched, apart from an eventual change of psu, as i don't think it is in the best condition (a little whining, and it's not from the fan).
Now for my Windows 98 system:
Pentium 4 1.5GHz
ECS P4VXASD (socket 423 and supports SDRAM and DDR)
1x512MB DDR333 (used to have 1GB, but removed the other dimm for windows 98)
GeForce 2 MX 64MB
PCTV tuner/capture card
Maxtor 20GB (to be replaced with a Samsung 40GB) IDE
Samsung CD-RW, LG DVD-ROM, floppy drive
400w psu, all inside an oem case from around 2004
Thinking about an "upgrade" (not really) to this system. Since I managed to get 2 rdram sticks to add to the 2 I already have, I thought of replacing the motherboard with an MSI 850Pro2 (the one with the weird Rimm configuration) with 384MB RDRAM (2x128+2x64). What do you think? Worth it for the "rdram thing"? The only problem with this is that the MSI has some bulging capacitors so it won't be used without being recapped. I also have another cpu(1.4GHz) and could make another P4 build, but for now space is an issue so it is not in the plans, as I plan to build a third older system.
Here are both, AMD on top, P4 on the bottom:
Now for the third system...I have some parts, and my doubt is around the OS and the graphics card. The planned build:
Pentium II 350MHz (I also have a 333MHz, which is passive cooled, but is only 66MHz FSB)
FIC VB-601 (also have a VB-609 from an old HP vectra computer, but this only has 3 dimms, as opposed to the 4 of the vb-601, and also a weird front panel connector and a more limited bios)
Some SDRAM (the board has 4 slots and i have a lot of ram modules, so anything up to 1GB is possible)
Creative Ensoniq ES1371 or CT4810 (both pretty similar, so won't make much difference)
Maxtor 20GB (from the P4)
cheapo network card (i have some 3 or 4 3com cards somewhere)
For OS, i still don't know what to install here. The 3 possibilities are 95, 98SE or NT. If I install 98SE, the P4 may be upgraded to windows 2000. The purpose is playing win 9x era games, and also some dos games.
With that in mind, what graphics card should I choose? What I have available for it:
- S3 Trio 64V+
- S3 Trio 64UV+
- Matrox Productiva G100 4MB
- Matrox Millenium G200 8MB SGRAM
- Riva TNT2 M64 32MB
- Hercules 3D Prophet 4000XT 32MB (Kyro) (Needs to be recapped, but there are only 3 caps so should be easy)
Thanks for reading, and i'll appreciate all your comments!
W10: Xeon X3220|2x2GB DDR2|Radeon HD6570
WXP: A64 X2 3800+|DFI Lanparty nF4 SLI-DR|2x1GB DDR|X850XT
W98: P4 1.5|512MB|GF2 MX
W95/DOS: P2 350|128MB|RagePro|SB PCI128